Sami Salo has signed for a reported $14 million over 4 years. As noted by the Vancouver Sun this the identical salary to Mitchell and Ohlund. If you include inflation to this deal it makes it work out to about $3.3M/year.
I'm a big fan of paying <$4M for a defenseman. Unless you really know what your getting (Pronger, Lidstrom), your better off getting 2 decent defenseman than one you hope will be amazing (and will likely be injured). There are plenty of examples of overpaid players, but some of the more recent signings are quite embarrassing (Chara, Jovanovski). In fact I would argue that 5 of the 9 defenseman who get more than $5 million per season are significantly overpaid. I was concerned that Salo would test the market and there would be a number of teams who would offer $4.5M+ for him, however it appears Salo would rather stay in Vancouver than anything else.
Happy day for a Vancouver fan.
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